What follows is informed opinion, but not indisputable fact.
Consider the following thought experiment. You have a large, two-log pontoon boat with just a flat deck and no furniture, engine or anything but you. You are standing at the center of the boat that weighs 1,000 pounds plus your 200 pounds. As the weight is balanced fore and aft, the logs have sunk evenly into the water just enough to displace a volume of water that weighs 1,200 pounds. You then walk to the very front of the deck and stop. The bow of the boat lowers and the stern rises, but the volume of water displaced by the now tilted logs still weighs 1,200 pounds. You walk back to the center of the boat and it levels out again.
You now cause a four foot long, 200 pound log to appear in the center of the boat at the bow. The three logs must displace an additional 200 pounds of water to keep the boat afloat. All three logs will sink slightly deeper but because the added weight is forward of the center of the boat, the bow will sink more than the stern. Adding the additional short log at the front actually caused the bow to sit slightly lower than before.
Had you caused a full length log to appear in the center of the boat, it too would have required more water to be displaced, but because of its length, it would likely have allowed all three logs to ride slightly higher in the water than with only two.
One more thing to consider - when the bow of the boat encounters a fast moving wave, the force of buoyancy pushing upward begins to increase as soon as the front of the log begins to sink deeper into the water. But, the boat will not react instantly because of its mass. Newton’s Law says the boat’s acceleration upward will be in proportion to the magnitude of the upward force divided by the mass of the boat. Plowing happens because the wave overruns the boat faster than buoyancy can lift it. I suspect adding a four foot log at the front wouldn’t change much.
